This invention relates to a sheet collecting device for collecting and aligning the sides of sheets, such as bills or banknotes with randomly mixed obverse and reverse sides.
A sheet sorter/stacker has been developed as a sheet collecting apparatus wherein sheets such as bills or bank notes, including various denominations, are inspected and sorted/counted in accordance with the inspection results in one continous operation.
In the bank note sorter/stacker of this type, the banknotes include a mixture of obverse and reverse notes, which are placed into an input section and are fed one by one to an inspection unit by a take out device. After inspection of the denomination and the like, the notes are collected separately according to the results of the inspection. At the same time, if required, the banknotes are collected separately in designated numbers, and the sides of the banknotes are aligned. The notes are then sealed into bundles of the designated numbers.
In a prior system, banknotes are taken out one by one from an input section and sensed with respect to denomination, etc. Then, they are sorted with all obverse or reverse sides facing in the same direction through either a straight path or switchback path according to the sensing result. Then in the next stage, the notes are divided and collected at a collecter having a separater attached for separation into specified numbers of notes.
However, when using this type of prior art system, space has to be provided for a front path and a back path in order to orient bills with the obverse and reverse sides facing in the same directions. This results in the inconvenience of the unit becoming bulky. Another prior art device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,470,590 owned by the same assignee as the present invention. In that device, a rotating blade wheel and a rotating sectional stacking member are used to separate the notes into a predetermined plurality of notes. However, with this structure, notes may become disoriented in the space between adjacent blades, resulting in improper operation. Also, this arrangment requires a relatively large amount of space in the collecting device.